There was a street joke my dad always told growing up. I've heard it a million times, so it's no longer funny to me, but: Two cannibals are eating a clown, and one looks at the other and says, Does this taste funny to you? —JOE MANDE

ABOUT THE COMEDIAN: "This is a true nightmare scenario," Joe Mande says onstage in the Comedy Store in Los Angeles while shooting his favorite jokes. "It's like an empty club with only comics and you're performing in front of them." The stand-up comedian, who has written for Parks and Recreation and is notorious for causing trouble on Twitter, cites comics like Gary Gulman and Bill Burr as inspirations, and he even tells one punchline from his dad.

Mande refuses to categorize what makes a joke great, however. "I'm going to plead the fifth on all these questions," he says. "I think it's a minefield when people start talking about what's funny or not." But still Mande has a long list of what he does find funny, ranging from Saturday Night Live's "Deep Thoughts By Jack Handy" ("I thought Jack Handy was a character, but he's a real guy," Mande notes) to hip-hop. His love for the musical genre even inspired his comedy album, Bitchface, which Mande unveiled last year. "I pretty much only listen to hip-hop mixtapes," he says. "I recorded an album and then went right back to work on Parks. I was sitting on this recording and I started talking to people and came up with the idea of 'Oh, I should make it sound like a hip-hop mixtape.' It's really crazy how easily it all fell into place. It turned out just how I wanted, but in retrospect it's like 'This is just confusing for everyone.'"